In the past years digital national libraries have been founded in almost every European state. Despite their partially high technical standards these libraries often do not follow yet elaborated digitization strategies, a fact that displays itself especially in the selection of materials for digitization: most digitized materials belong to the state nation, i.e. the majority, while the heritage of the historical national minorities within the state as well as of the own minorities abroad is often neglected, or not properly presented by a clear separation from the majority’s materials. The present paper discusses the currently existing possibilities for efficiently digitizing and presenting the cultural materials of a nation and its neighboring historical national minorities as well as of multicultural regions populated by several ethnic groups. The paper concludes with a short analysis of the importance of digitization (“digital cultural motorics”) for individual, social and ethnic identities by theorizing about the relation of the classical cultural canon and the digital cultural canon, which is forming today and deeply influencing the future cultural development. Continue reading Digitizing and presenting minority heritage – from the ,classical’ to the ,digital cultural canon’→

The MinoRecs-Blog serves as communication infrastructure for librarians, archivists and humanities researchers who are involved or leading in the process of digitizing the cultural heritage of historical ethnical minorities. MinoRecs provides them with the possibility to present their projects, to announce scientific events, inform about new technologies, debate new strategies and to establish new networks of international collaboration. By raising awareness for the issue the blog also intends to reach out to policy makers and media representatives and sensibilize the public for the urgent need to take into account the right of an ethnical minority to have its cultural heritage transferred and preserved in the digital world.